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China Now Top Patent Filer
smitty777 writes "China has passed the U.S. as the number-one filer of patents this year, according to a report by Thompson Reuters. With an average annual increase of 16.7%, China has filed 314,000 patents last year. This brings the total share of China in worldwide holdings up from 54% to 58%. However, according to legal expert Elliot Papageorgiou: 'One thing is volume, quality is quite another. The return, or the percentage of grants, of the patents is still not as high in China as, say, in the U.S., Japan or some places in Europe.' This was also a record year for patent filing over all, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). According to their numbers, worldwide patent applications are up 7.2%, at 1.98 million in 2010. FTA: 'WIPO Director General Francis Gurry on Tuesday attributed the rise to the "knowledge economy" and globalization led by U.S. and Chinese innovation.'"
Whopdeedoo.
Like most of China's academic papers these patents will also be worthless garbage.
They're complaining about the quality of Chinese patents?
I suppose bias against Chinese-originated patents could stifle this... but I suppose they will just create shell companies to work around that.
Is it where companies hoard patents on irrelevant things and use them to sue the pants off competitors?
In other news, the RIAA was found to have the largest amount of pirated songs downloaded.
companies are winning lawsuits on "clicking a phone number in an email in order to dial the number" and "switching to an app while on the phone." companies would be mad not to try to patent every tiny user interface action, technical revision, bugfix, etc. regardless of prior art or novelty. prediction, 2012 will be even bigger!!!
The US has patents mostly because of foreign researchers in the US. When Chinese / Indians / Russians / Israili / Singaporeans / others discover they no longer have to go to US for research work, the US will have almost nothing.
hopefully the us gets an incentive to fix the patent system. China is as entitled to patents as any other country... but the fact that the usa does not want to be deadlocked by china may give an incentive to fix the patent system :)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Fixed that for you
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If they could patent the manufacturing of everything they produce, including the Idevices ;), i would laugh so hard...
"One thing is volume, quality is quite another..."
Right. 'Cause, ya know, the U.S.A. cranks-out quality patents all day.
its 54%, not %54
get a brain morans
Monkey see, monkey do. I think we've created a monster patent troll.
If anything, I would think that granting a higher percentage of patents is a sign of lower quality.
But then again, I also don't see more patents as a rise in the "knowledge economy" or globalization lead by innovation.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
>"China has passed the US as the number one filer of patents this year"
Yes, but are they REAL patents or stupid, unfair, poor-quality software "concept" patents that have totally clogged the US system?
No need to start a company/business anymore, just file some generic patents that any retard could come up with, become aware of people infringing them but don't do anything except wait until they're ripe for suing for millions or billions, just like every other company around and then sue the crap out of everyone for millions of times more than you would have legitimately earned using your own patents.
So lame what the patent system has turned into; generic patents, software patents, and any standard medical patents etc... should all just be made null and void, and anyone that tries to sue another company with one when they have no intention of using the patent themselves and just trolling should be jailed for it.
Ok People let start the China bashing.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, in his talk at last years TAM, showed us a world map that illustrated the number of new scientific research papers filed by country. In 2000, the U.S. was still a leader. Then he showed the 2008 map, and the U.S. looked like a deflated balloon. My comment at the time was that primary research shows you applied research ten years down the road, and industrial innovation 20 years down the road. Guess I was right.
Tyson's point was that the Bush administration's defunding of pure science was reflected in the map. Much as libertarians don't like to hear this, private research goes into low hanging fruit. Primary research is too risky, particularly since, if done right, it enters the public domain. Only a handful of companies do this (IBM and Google, take a bow--Apple and Microsoft, sit down.) Medical advances are particularly susceptible to this. The computer revolution came from NASA and the Apollo project, the internet came from DARPA funding of AT&T for the creation of resilient network (those same Bell labs are now beggars at the table of Alcatel, a French company.)
Every other country that is a major player is spending a lot on primary research, and this funding is coming from the government. It's infrastructure, it lays the road for the business of the future, and its the one area where the government excels. China is spending a fortune on this, and we've exported all of our know how to them already, When IBM farms out manufacturing to another country, they send their engineers there to teach the manufacturers exactly what to do, and many other companies do exactly the same thing. They know almost everything we know, but we don't know everything they know--not anymore.
The Greatest Generation, the people who grew up in the depression and fought the Axis, understood responsibility. They did a lot of things wrong, but they knew how to work together towards a better future, and our standard of living is the result of that. Can you imagine rubber and silk drives today? Americans couldn't even be bothered to pay higher taxes for Iraq and Afghanistan, even while they made noises about supporting the troops. It's time to grow up and carry not only our weight, but more than our weight, and pass a torch that burns brighter for our having held it. So the next time you hear the latest Fox demagogue complaining about taxes, and demanding lower taxes, imagine how his belly aching would have sounded in the 40's.
I still think more patents brings more problem that its solve.
More patents could bring patent litigation for trivials things and stiffle innovation, like in the U.S.
China is the perennial champion of the International Math Olympiad.
I always contend that math is he mother of all sciences.
The % sign does not appear before the number. Please do not make me angry.
...all of which were stolen from the US by Chinese hackers! ;)
Check your premises.
And higher taxes may increase revenue...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Economist Paul Pecorino presented a model in 1995 that predicted the peak of the Laffer curve occurred at tax rates around 65%.[12] A 1996 study by Y. Hsing of the United States economy between 1959 and 1991 placed the revenue-maximizing tax rate (the point at which another marginal tax rate increase would decrease tax revenue) between 32.67% and 35.21%.[13] A 1981 paper published in the Journal of Political Economy presented a model integrating empirical data that indicated that the point of maximum tax revenue in Sweden in the 1970s would have been 70%.[14] A recent paper by Trabandt and Uhlig of the NBER presented a model that predicted that the US and most European economies are on the left of the Laffer curve (in other words, that raising taxes would raise further revenue).[15] The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics reports that for academic studies, the mid-range for the revenue maximizing rate is around 70%.[16]
However, a study by Teather and Young of the conservative Adam Smith Institute using evidence from the Republic of Ireland has suggested that the optimal rate for capital gains tax, as opposed to income tax, may be around 20%, but this is at least partly due to savvy taxpayers holding onto assets in anticipation of tax rates being lowered in the future.[17] A 2007 study by the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, found that the revenue maximizing rate for corporate taxes in OECD countries was about 26%, down from about 34% in the 1980s.[18]
Except I'm not worried about bias, I'm thinking that if the Chinese get enough patents to lock the United States out of their own patent system that will be the state of affairs that finally sinks the whole software patent thing. If you have to send two bucks to China every time you write a Hello World program, maybe that will finally display just how broken the system is.
Once large corporate interests figure out that patents cost them more than they help them, that's when reform will suddenly become important. So GO CHINA and torpedo the whole thing! Best of luck to you guys.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Now that china has learned how to file obvious patents and make them sound kinda novel, will we have meaningful patent reform?
What your mind creates should not be anyone's property, not even your own. If you want complete control over your ideas and creations, keep them to yourself. Once knowledge is out, it's out, you do not own it, and neither do I.
given the fucked up state of the American patent system, the patent system is now a hindrance rather than a stimulus to innovation.
Yes, quality counts in academic papers, but .. crappiness counts in patents.
Yes, crappiness mildly obstructs obtaining the patent, fine file more patents. Yet, crappiness is an incredible asset once you obtaing the patent, but the more overboard, the more people you can sue.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Most of their patents probably originated here anyway. They were most likely stolen off U.S. computers from the thousands of companies that they hacked into. I wouldn't issue a Chinese patent in the U.S. until I did a background check on what company they stole it from. I'm also wondering how much longer we are going to put up with this crap.
How many of these are patents that were filed in other countries than China that are now being filed in China by the Chinese? i.e. not new design / research / etc but grabbing the rights to such 'inside' China.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Slashdot never fails to amaze me with the latent imperialist streak.
Our patents are a bit eccentric
Your patents are uninspired and frivolous
Their patents are blatant plagiarism
Basement-dwelling armchair scientists the lot of you.
According to a recent breakthrough called 'math' 314,000 patents in a year gives me 1,000 patents per day.
Can we put an end to crappy slashjournalism?, or citation needed. Not commenting on the quality of the patents. I don't care. I want to see sources in these 'news'.
Maybe patents should be made harder to get. Obvious, right? With millions of patents being added every year and hundreds of millions already in effect, the system has become so convoluted that the little man inventor, the only person supposedly benefiting from a relatively cheap patenting process, doesn't stand a chance of enforcing his patent or even being sure that it's valid. Charge a million dollars for patents and use the money to buy health insurance for families, or cat food for sickly hedgehogs or something equally worthy.
At least good ole USA still has the patents on "Method for correct placement of percentage (%) signs at the posterior of a numeral"
pertaining to China, I say we enforce patents, copyrights, trademarks and piracy with the same level that China does for us; almost non-existant.